The second major factor you need to consider while thinking about websites is
COSTING
Well, the first question any client asks me nowadays is “Whats your package for a website design?”. The answer I normally give to them is, “Please find some other service providers for packages”. There are 3 types of people who would be doing websites for you
- Freelancers
- Small and Medium level companies
- Top class Companies
1. Freelancers for web designing is now becoming a trend. It is rather sad when people with amateurish skills take hold of a beautiful product and mess it up. Off-course there are few good developers who start their journey as a free lance web designer. I personally know a bunch of them who can do excellent jobs in website designing. But, not all freelancers are like that. We now have a greater bunch of college passed outs who take web designing as a temporary solution for their unemployment and these people have brought the scale of website designing down to a great extend. In simple words, there is always a freelancer to give a quote of 1000 rupees when the actual work would have costed minimum 20 -30 grands for even a small scale company. So, my suggestion to all my clients and people who are reading this is, If you are looking at a namesake website, or a website to be developed just for the purpose of it and never to look back at it again, please go forward with the freelancers. These people can develop your website at a tremendously low cost and as you are not looking for after sale service, that wouldn’t be a problem too.
When a client get back to my quote saying that it could be done for 10% of the quoted amount by a freelancer, I always say them, “Its as simple as selecting a mobile gadget. You can have a way better Korean gadget with features greater than an iphone, but why do you choose a brand. The same applies here too. ” To be precise, if you want a one time investment website, you can contact a freelancer and he/she will do justice to you.
2. There are 2 types of companies in this category. One which chooses quality over quantity and one which chooses quantity over quality. The first type of companies, me being one among them, will never give you a pre-set package. They will understand your business, validate if you are a potential client on brand mileage, doing business with you would bring them more name and comfortness and would you be an added feather in their colourful clientele. If these cases are satisfied, they take the project in and make sure they put in a lot of their innovation into it and get it done properly. These companies mainly concentrate on the after sales service too. As serving a lot of client after sales would require more man power, these companies take only few clients in and grow slowly but with a good base. You can expect a standard rate from them for designing but it will be worth the money. The major problem over here is that these companies normally take a little more time from the actual committed timeline. Not always but it happens mostly as they spend some extra time on thinking how to set the website for you. You will off-course have some goody gifts from them like contents, images, extra free stuff, some period of free maintenance etc.
The second set of companies in this category are nothing more than freelancers. They concentrate on quantity of orders more than quality. You would have received messages stating “Dynamic websites at 1999/- only”. These messages come from companies like this. They have a base template and if the content and images if ready with you, they will replace it in their template and get it at the cost said above but they will for sure have loop holes hidden inside which will force you to go to them again for some extra this and that for which comes the actual cost for the work from these companies. So, my advice to you is nothing but BEWARE.
3. The final category is MNC’s where you literally don’t have to be worried for anything apart from cost. They would charge ten time from the cost of the previous category but the work would be nothing but Perfect. Their charges will include time spend with you over a coffee for requirement gathering, user requirement diagram (UML Diagrams) preparation, legal agreements, flow charts, Photoshop structural designs etc etc. If you are only looking for class and not about cost, then this is the category you will have to focus.
So next time you think that a website designing company has submitted you a higher quote, or internally feel happy that the quote has come way below your expectation, know one thing, You are placing yourself in one among the class mentioned above. “Nothing comes in a total reduction, if the cost is low-so is the quality”. Hope you had a great insight about the cost factor of web designing.
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